Jeroboams Education is a new series on our blog providing you with the lowdown on the most iconic wine producing regions of the world. Led by our super buying team, Peter Mitchell MW and Maggie MacPherson will introduce you to the key facts and a little history of all the regions you recognise but perhaps don’t know too well. To help really further your education, why not drink along? Browse our Southern Italy selection.

Introduction

The pace of life in the south can be very slow and the region is amongst the poorest in Europe. Sun baked throughout the growing season, one would instinctively assume this was red wine country, but alongside some rich and powerful reds there are also, in Campania, interesting whites and not only that, whites that are fresh tasting and high in acidity. This is due to a combination of vineyard sites, often at altitude, and the indigenous varieties grown here that positively thrive in hot weather. Campania is also home to one of the most age worthy wines of Italy and arguably the old grand cru of the south in Taurasi. Basilicata, Molise and Calabria each have one DOC of distinction and Puglia, for years the underbelly of Italian wine producing oceans of poor quality wine, now has a handful of good DOC’s, some ambitious producers and even at the lower end is making more characterful and commercial wine, often under the IGTs Puglia or Salento.

History

Whilst wine has not been made here for quite as long as it has in Sicily, this is the region on the mainland where wine was first likely made (in modern day Campania) probably before the 3rd century BC. At the height of the Roman Empire, the wines of Campania, mostly made around the bay of Naples, were the most sought after by the wealthy aristocracy of Rome, notably Falernum.  In common with the rest of Italy, wine continued to be made for mostly local consumption for the next 2 millennia, with little interest in the wines outside of their local regions. 

In the 1970s Antonio Mastroberadino began almost single-handedly to champion Campanian wines, especially Taurasi, which were of such a high quality that they were noticed internationally and the emergence of the region onto the world stage began. Poverty ridden Molise mostly remains a backwater whilst Basilicata and Campania are making tentative steps towards estate bottling and some quality production and slowly achieving limited international status. In the 1970s and 80s most Puglian wine was quietly tankered north to add colour and alcohol to weedy (but more famous) wines (and not just in Italy) or was used as the base for Vermouths and aperitifs. An increasing amount also went for distillation via EU subsidy and none of this encouraged a quality mindset. 

The 90s saw ‘flying winemakers’, often from hot new world countries, arrive and start to make cheap inoffensive varietal wines in the mould of their home nations and vast swathes of Chardonnay in particular were planted to satisfy supermarket buyers in the UK and Germany. While Puglia still produces large amounts of bulk wine, which overshadows the unique quality wines made from indigenous varieties by conscientious estates,recent years have seen a fall in demand (and production) of bulk and more focus on quality, but the wines still struggle for international recognition.

The Regions of Southern Italy